Bill Walton has seen the Dead 850+ times

Professional basketball legend Bill Walton, who has seen more concerts by The Grateful Dead than almost anyone, will play a major role at the Dead’s upcoming 50th anniversary farewell tour heading to the Bay are and Chicago this summer. Here he poses by a Grateful Dead-inspired table in his Hillcrest backyard.

John Gastaldo

Basketball legend, longtime Grateful Dead fan is hosting the pay-per-views of the fabled band’s five farewell concerts. ‘I couldn’t be more excited,’ he says.

Even in a stadium filled with 50,000 Grateful Dead fans, Bill Walton easily stands out — and it has nothing to do with his nearly 7-foot height or custom-made, size 17 sneakers.

“I’ve been to 854 Dead shows,” said the San Diego-bred basketball legend, veteran TV sportscaster and lifelong music devotee. He is fondly described by Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann as “Celebrity Deadhead Number One.”

Walton has actually attended even more concerts than the number he cites by this fabled Bay Area band, which performs the first of its five 50th anniversary farewell concerts tonight at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, where it plays again tomorrow.

The final three shows will take place Friday, Saturday and next Sunday at Soldier Field in Chicago. All five are sold out. Walton will be front and center at each of them with his wife of 26 years, Lori, whose first meeting was at least indirectly facilitated by the Grateful Dead. Formed in 1965, the group created an enduring template for today’s jam-band and Americana music scenes. The band also anticipated the file-sharing of music on the Internet by several decades and developed an immensely loyal, multi-generational following. In the 1990s, only the Rolling Stones made more money as a concert act.

Walton seemed to almost levitate with excitement as he discussed the impending concerts during a Thursday interview at his home near Balboa Park.

“I’m the luckiest guy in the world, because I’m going to spend five out of the next nine days with my friends, the Grateful Dead ... the countdown has begun!” he said, beaming broadly.

“But I also get the privilege and honor of being the television host of the pay-per-view event, so we’re going to have the time of our life. We’re going to have nothing but fun. We have no idea what’s going to happen, but that’s what the Grateful Dead is all about.”

Music-fueled euphoria

Whatever happens, with each pay-per-view scheduled to last five hours (including intermission) — and possible surprise guests sitting in — will be ideally suited for both Walton and his fellow Deadhead wife.

"If you don't like the music, you're really going to suffer!" Lori Walton said, a playful smile dancing across her face. "Because the concerts are at least four hours long, each, and that's a long time if you're not into them."

Like no other American band before or since, the Grateful Dead has had a profound cultural impact that extends beyond its unique blend of rock, blues, country, jazz, soul, bluegrass and other homegrown American music styles.

The group became the most notable counterculture heroes of the 1960s to endure — and thrive — in subsequent decades. The band, which scored just one Top 40 hit with 1987’s “Touch of Grey,” was such a popular concert attraction that — between 1990 and 1995 alone — its tours grossed $225 million.

“Everyone’s a Deadhead!” said Walton, who cites the band as a transcendent force in his life.

“The inspiration, the healing, the purpose, the passion — all the things I love are embodied in the Grateful Dead,” he said. “One of the things I love so much about basketball is the same thing I love about the Grateful Dead. You go to a Dead show and there are no restraints on what will happen. The band creates this phenomenal atmosphere, out of nothing, and it’s the same in a basketball game.”

Basketball and the Dead

Walton, who stands 6-foot-11, grabbed a nearby basketball, and said: “This ball, it just sits there, until you do something with it. The Dead is exactly like a great basketball team. The team comes out and the fans go crazy, and you play better than you ever thought you can play. ... Every aspect of life is present in the Grateful Dead, every aspect, and our job is to find the good and to spread that message.”

A 1970 Helix High School graduate, Walton attended his first Grateful Dead show here in 1967. But he did not begin keeping count until after enrolling at UCLA in 1970, which is why his tally of 854 shows is low.

“People started bugging me at Dead concerts, many years ago,” he recalled, smiling. “They’d ask: ‘Bill, what (number) show is this for you?’ I’d say: ‘I don’t know; I just go to the shows.’ And they’d ask: ‘What songs are (the Dead) playing next?’ I’d say: ‘I don’t know. It’s all one song, it’s all one show.’ I didn’t count the shows at the beginning. But it’s now at 854, and I’m looking forward to five more."

By his count, though, Walton is an underachiever.

"More than 854 shows, over 48 years," he mused. "That’s less than 20 shows a year, so that’s nothing!"

Walton wrote the forewords to the 2010 book “Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History,” and the 2011 book “Dead Letters: The Very Best Grateful Dead Fan Mail.” His boundless enthusiasm for the band has long been a matter of record.

Coupled with his 24 years of professional experience as a TV sportscaster, he is uniquely qualified to serve as the pay-per-view host of the band’s final concerts.

‘He knows his Dead’

“I can’t think of anybody better. Bill’s a pro, and he knows his Dead,” said Grateful Dead historian Dennis McNally, the band’s former publicist and spokesman.

“I met Bill for the first time at a Dead show in Ventura, around 1984. People knew he was a Deadhead, and there was a certain pride in him being a celebrity and a Deadhead. We liked to brag about the famous Deadheads.

“His parents must have been the most loving, remarkably wonderful parents ever because Bill has a quality of enjoyment of life, a sweetness of disposition and an unwavering enthusiasm that are all absolutely extraordinary. He will do anything for his friends. He spent a certain amount of time backstage (with the Dead), because he was the band’s friend, and everybody’s friend. But he was always there to see the show, not to have special privileges.”

McNally chuckled as he recounted what he knew of Walton's first meeting with the members of the Grateful Dead.

"The famous, apocryphal story about him and the Dead is, when Bill was playing with the Portland Trailblazers, he went to see the Dead play there at the Paramount Theater. The road crew looks out and sees this red-haired guy, who is apparently standing on his seat, so they sent a security guard to ask him to get off his seat. The guard comes back, and says: 'He's not standing on his seat!' So someone in the crew said: 'Well we better give him a backstage pass and have him watch from the stage, because he’ll block the views of people three rows behind him'.’’

'My greatest accomplishment'

Walton smiles when McNally's story is repeated to him. Then, he sets the record straight.

"I'm a lifelong stutterer," he said, "and learning how to speak (well) is my greatest accomplishment. My limitations with speech and communication had been one of the most difficult and painful hurdles, mountains, for me to overcome. I was so shy, and it was so hard to talk...

"I got national publicity playing (basketball) for UCLA, and people had come up to me, constantly, and said: 'Bill, come meet the band.' And I always said: 'No.' I was too shy. Anyhow, in Portland, as the band played, they kept looking out, and thinking: 'Something is wrong. Why is everyone sitting down, and that big guy with red hair is standing?' Then they realized: 'Oh, they are all standing, and he is, too.' So they had someone from their crew come to me, and he said: 'Why don’t you come and watch from backstage, so everybody else can see?' "

Walton grinned.

"I said: 'Come on! This is where I want to be!' I liked being up close and in front of the stage, watching the Dead and their light show, and being in the crowd. That’s where I'm going to be this weekend at Levi's Stadium, and next weekend at Soldier Field in Chicago. So, I turned them down in Portland, when they invited me to watch from the stage. But I said: 'I'll come back at intermission.' I met everybody in the band, and things were never the same again. They became our best friends and part of our lives. My life has been incredibly enhanced by my friendship and relationship with the Dead."

Walton is so close with the Grateful Dead’s members that they often stayed at his home, rather than a hotel, when visiting San Diego. The band's members did the same when their tours with their own groups brought them here.

"Frequently," said Dead historian McNally. "And that was fairly anomalous. If you're a famous person — say, a member of the Grateful Dead, specifically — there's a certain ease when you're with other famous people, because certain things don't need to be explained. They're used to this status of people looking at you, and that leads to a certain comfort level. Bill has a very nice house. It's quite large and not pretentious at all, comfortable and a delightful place to be, with these most wonderful gardens.

"The members of the Dead had friends in different cities, yes. But, generally speaking, on tour they stayed in a hotel. Because the problem is: 'If you stay with friends, how much privacy do you get?' They could have that privacy with Bill. It's very peaceful, staying with him."

Half of Walton's living room is filled with musical instruments. These include an array of drums, cymbals and percussion instruments given to him by the band’s drummers, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart. All of the band's members once signed a Zildjian cymbal for Walton as a birthday gift. On it, Garcia wrote: Hey Bill. Beat this!

Virtually every room in the Waltons' home is imbued by the Grateful Dead, in ways large and small. Framed posters and photos of the band hang from nearly every wall. Pieces of furniture are elaborately carved with the band's trademark skull-and-roses logo, which also appears on a bedspread in one of the guest rooms and on Walton's two bicycles. The western wall in the shower in the Waltons' cozy gym contains a red, blue, red and white, floor-to-ceiling, tile depiction of the skull and roses, with the words "Grateful Dead" across the top and the words "The Long Strange Trip" near the bottom.

“Thankfully, I’m a music fan,” said Walton’s wife, Lori. “Otherwise, it would be really difficult to be married to Bill, because so much of our life is surrounded by the Dead.”

Asked where she and Walton first met, Lori laughed.

“Our versions are really different,” she said. “This is mine: 'We met backstage at a Dead concert.' Bill’s version is: ‘We met at church.’ But I think it’s because he considers the Dead concerts to be church! My mom read once that we met at church. She phoned me to say she was so happy I’d met Bill at church. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth.”

For many Grateful Dead fans, the group's farewell concerts this weekend and next are bittersweet. It's an opportunity for the band and its followers to commune again, en masse. But it also represents the final closing of a door and the end of an era (even if, as rumored, three of the four band members tour in the fall under another name, with John Mayer assuming Garcia's role).

Walton is circumspect.

"My job is to yell and cheer so loud, and so long, at these five concerts that they play some more," he said. "But it's their lives, and they’ve been doing this for a long time, and we have to give them the respect and courtesy of allowing them to have their lives. Because when you are in the public eye, you get so much, but you also (make) sacrifices, and all we can do is hope.

"And we are most grateful that they are doing this. It's been a long time since it's been on this scale, with the world coming together for the Dead. I mean, I haven’t talked to anybody coming from Antarctica. But I have talked to people from each of the other six continents who are coming. And we will all be welcome with open arms. I'm just going to be happy and healed."

With, or without, the band remaining active on concert stages or as a recording unit, Walton will continue to be fueled by its music.

"There’s never a day in my life where I don’t listen to the Grateful Dead," he said. "And when I don’t listen, it’s because I’m sick and because I’m not smart enough to turn the music on! But (I always welcome) the ability to consume, and the ability to immerse yourself, in the music culture and in the art work, the history and the inspiration, and the light and all the things that make the Grateful Dead what they are. Because they have been at the forefront of everything good in the world, in terms of driving us to a better place.

"I’m glad that they are playing (these five farewell shows). We’ve learned to take what we can get from them. It’s their lives; we don’t own them, we can't tell them what to do. We are so lucky they have given us everything. They have given us their lives. I’m going to go, and I’m going to get up as close as I can to the front, and I’m going to cheer and yell, and beg for more.

"We’re just getting started! And I’m looking forward to the next 50 years!"

The Bill Walton Files

Age: 62

Born in: La Mesa

Lives in: Hillcrest

Family: Wife Lori; sons Adam, Nathan, Luke and Christopher

Attended first Grateful Dead concert: 1967

Total number of Grateful Dead concerts attended: At least 854

Total number of overall concerts attended: 3,000-plus

High school athletic achievements: Led Helix High School to two consecutive basketball championships. Holds the national all-time high school record for field goals (79 percent).

College athletic achievements: Three-time recipient of the NCAA Player of the Year Award. Helped lead UCLA to NCAA championships in 1972 and 1973. Has the NCAA record for highest field goal percentages in a single season (.763 in 1973) and career (.686, from 1972 to 1974).

Professional athletic achievements: Portland Trail Blazers’ top overall draft pick in the 1974 draft and helped lead the team to the NBA championship in 1977. Played with the Los Angeles Clippers from 1979 to 1985 and with the Boston Celtics from 1985 to 1988. Set a number of NBA Finals records, including most defensive rebounds and blocked shots in one game.

Business and philanthropic pursuits: Executive director of San Diego Sport Innovators; lead ambassador for The Better Way Back spinal protection program; equity partner customer relations director for Azunia Tequila Co.; advisory board member for the Rex Foundation, the charitable wing of the Grateful Dead.